


Fallout

by rudbeckia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Death, Kylux Cantina, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 22:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13726836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: The Supreme Leader and his General are planetside for an easy diplomatic mission. Or it should have been. Ren has to deal with an assassination attempt, a misinterpretation of his orders that has them scurrying for the First Minister’s own fallout shelter, and a general who does not cope well with loud noises and enclosed spaces.





	Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> Kylux Cantina prompt: Fallout shelter

“This,” declared General Armitage Hux, pointing at Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, “is all YOUR fault.”  
“No.” Ren shook his head and glared at Hux. “It is YOUR captains who started the bombardment early.”  
“Yes!” Hux was going pink with rage and shaking a bit. Ren watched a white fleck appear at the corner of his mouth as he seethed. “On YOUR orders! Your PREMATURE orders!”

“I THOUGHT THEY WOULD KNOW!” Yelled Ren, gesticulating in Hux’s face. “BOMB THE PLANET _AFTER_ THE COMMANDING OFFICERS ARE CLEAR OF THE SURFACE!”

“WELL THEN YOU OUGHT TO HAVE MADE THAT CLEAR IN YOUR ORDERS! WHAT THE KRIFF DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN WHEN YOU ORDERED ‘DROP EVERYTHING ON THIS LOCATION IMMEDIATELY’?”

Ren stepped back and calmed himself. This argument was pointless, and Hux was breathing heavily now, his mind unusually disordered for a man so driven by routines. He watched Hux’s eyes flick from side to side in their orbits.  
“General?” he asked quietly, “are you okay?”

Hux screwed his eyes shut, balled his fists and held his arms rigid by his sides. He shook his head in two rapid, jerky movements. Ren rolled his eyes. Typical Hux: all pomp and circumstance safe on the bridge of a star destroyer, falling apart at a little action on the ground. 

Under the ground, technically, Ren reminded himself. After he’d blocked blaster fire from an incompetent assassin in the debate chamber and screamed the order into his wrist comm, then felt the unexpectedly early blast wave from the first barrage hitting the outskirts of the capital city, he’d grabbed Hux by the wrist and pelted down and down and down to the bunker he’d known would be there because the First Minister was thinking about it. He’d thrown the local dignitaries aside, pulled Hux in and sealed the blast door. They would survive their own demonstration of retribution for treachery.

Hux stood immobile. “We’re going to wait it out,“ said Ren, “and when this sithforsaken city is rubble and dust we will return to the surface.” Ren softly touched over Hux’s mind, recoiling at the raw fear he felt there. Perhaps it would be kind if he...

Ren reached out a hand to Hux’s neck, intending to render him unconscious until the bombardment ceased, but Hux snapped into action, blocking his arm and shoving him off.

“Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Me.”

“Hux,” Ren backed off with his hands palm forward at shoulder height. “I can spare you this. I can take the panic away until it’s over.”

“I AM NOT IN A PANIC!” Hux yelled, leaping back and bumping the wall of the bunker as a BANG! then a rumble and a judder made its way through the solid rock and grit fell from a flaw that opened above them. His eyes and teeth and fists clamped tight again. Ren took his chance: he touched Hux lightly on the head, caught him as he fell, then carried him deeper into the shelter. He needed time to think and Hux’s distress was too much of a distraction.

 

“Hux!” Someone was calling him from far away. Hux ignored it. He’d had the best night’s sleep in years and was not ready to accept that it was over.

“Hux!” Someone was shaking him now. How irritating! He opened his eyes but it must be still dark out because the nightlight was on. He closed his eyes again and sighed. Not morning yet. Sleep.

“HUX!” 

“FUCK!” Hux bolted upright and rubbed his face. “Ugh! What the FUCK! I was ASLEEP!”

“I know,” said Ren. “Sorry about the water in the face. It’s time to go.”  
“Go?” echoed Hux. “Where? It’s the middle of the night! What are you doing here anyway?”  
“That’s all unimportant. The bombing has stopped. You need to get up and help me to get us out of here so that you can send a safe extraction code.”  
“What are you babbling about, Ren? I was...” Hux looked around at the room with the dim, emergency lighting and the bare rock walls. “Oh,” he said. “Fuck.”

Ren tried not to laugh. Ren tried even harder to suppress the thought that General Asshole Hux was adorable with dishevelled hair, a foul mouth and a temper moderated by the confusion that often followed a period of force-induced slumber.

Hux scowled and the moment passed. “Did you knock me out?” he asked, snappish in tone.  
“No of course not,” lied Ren. “You were injured. You fell when one of the big blasts hit and you knocked yourself out. I brought you to the back of the shelter. Rock’s thicker here.”  
Hux’s hands felt all around his head and he raised an eyebrow at Ren.  
“Oh, I dealt with the physical injury while you were out cold,” explained Ren. “I did a good job.”  
“Obviously,” replied Hux with heavy skepticism. “It feels as if I was never injured in the first place.”

Ren took Hux’s hand and led him through the shelter to the blast doors. Hux allowed it, and paled more than Ren thought possible when he saw the crack in the roof made of solid bedrock.  
“Kriff! Was that from the blast that..”  
“Yes. You survived. Help me.”

Hands on the inside of the blast door, face showing determined concentration, Ren moved the groaning durasteel aside to reveal boulders and rubble that had cascaded down the emergency stairwell from the floors above ground and crashed into the protective alloy doors. Paying no heed to the bodies that lay here and there, crushed and broken by debris from the devastating bombardment from orbit, Ren and Hux stepped out of the shelter into the dark basement. 

“Still got your tracker?” asked Hux, feeling grit irritate his eyes, breathing dust and coughing. Ren nodded, took off his belt and threw it back into the shelter. Hux stared after it. “But they’ll be looking for us! That’s transmitting our location to the extraction team!“  
“And to anyone else with the relevant scanner settings,” said Ren. “Get rid of yours too. The more I think about it the more something feels wrong about this. Despite my poor choice of words, your contingency order to begin the barrage _only once we were clear_ should have stood.” Ren put a hand on Hux’s shoulder and asked, “Hux, who do you trust, and why?”

Hux blinked and tried to clear the grains from his eyes. “Well, you I suppose,” he said, “because I have no choice. Opan because he’s too inexperienced to be a threat to my command, but give him three months and I’ll have to transfer him. Paze and a few others because I have yet to sign off on their promotions so they’ll want me alive for that.”  
Ren removed Hux’s belt from him and tossed it after his own, then nodded. “Sounds about right.” He handed Hux his wrist comm. “Tell one of them to get us out of here personally and with discretion.”

They had to clamber up the stairwell as far as possible and Ren had to use the force to clear their way to the surface, but eventually they emerged, filthy and perspiring, to a greying sky and a haze of fine dust in the atmosphere. The Finalizer was still in synchronous orbit, surveying the devastation and dealing with anything that looked like survivors fleeing the obliterated city. Hux contacted The Finalizer directly. He sent a private coded message to Captain Opan then handed the wrist comm back to Ren.  
“What do you think happened, Ren?” asked Hux. “This should have been an easy engagement for the new Supreme Leader. Turn up, accept the government’s capitulation to our demands, give a pretty speech, recruit a few locals into the ranks and leave again. This waste,” Hux waved a hand over the rubble, “did not have to happen.”  
“I will leave the investigation to you, general,” replied Ren. “It is more within your skills.”  
“Oh?” Hux laughed. “I have skills? Is that some kind of compliment?”  
“Don’t make me regret saving your life,” said Ren. “I could have left you unconscious down there.”

He wished to unsay it the instant he felt Hux’s cold reaction to his words. Lights swept the sky above them and Hux looked up. There would not be time once Opan ferried them back to The Finalizer.

“Hux,” said Ren. Hux looked away.

“Hux!” This time Ren put a little force behind it, but Hux resisted.

“HUX!” Ren yelled and Hux flinched. “I would never... I need you. You’re _my_ general. My co-commander. You know I can’t—“  
“I will find them,” said Hux quietly. “I will bring them before you, whoever they are, and we will watch their execution.” Ren stood speechless at the venom behind Hux’s softly spoken words. He swallowed and sucked his lips. Hux nodded. “I promise you this. You may be a pain in the arse with a particular talent for putting your boot in your enormous mouth, but you are the... you are _my_ Supreme Leader.”

Ren nodded, eyes fixed on Hux’s face, haloed in gold by the glow of the shuttle’s landing lights. There was no more time. Hux strode towards the shuttle where Opan waited on the ramp with a med pack. Ren followed. As the shuttle soared into the atmosphere, Opan and the pilot sitting up front, Ren stole a glance at Hux. Hux looked back at him and laid a hand on his arm.  
“I think,” he said quietly, “that given the sensitive nature of my enquiry into the exact circumstances of this debacle, I should begin by interviewing you in the privacy of my chambers as soon as we return.”  
“I think,” replied Ren, warming a little despite the cabin’s chill, “that is a very good place to start.”


End file.
